Boss of Xbox in Japan resigns following terrible Xbox One sales

Xbox consoles and Japan have never really got along very well, and regardless of the hardware generation, both Sony and Nintendo have always outsold Microsoft there. So even if Microsoft had produced the perfect next-gen console last year, it would have struggled to sell in Japan. But the Xbox One was far from perfect, and sales of the console in Japan haven’t just been bad, they’ve been absolutely terrible.

The Xbox One launched there in December and only managed to sell 23,562 units during its first 4 days on sale. That was not a great sign when you consider the PS4 sold 309,000 units, and the Wii U 308,000 units during their respective launch weeks. However, the launch has turned out to be the high point of Xbox One sales so far, with only 776 being sold last week (PS4 sold 12,400 and Wii U sold 9,600).

So it probably won’t come as much of a surprise to hear that the boss of Xbox in Japan, Takashi Sensui, has resigned his position. He isn’t leaving Microsoft, but no longer feels capable of leading the Xbox division.

To be fair to Sensui, he didn’t have much to work with as there isn’t any system-selling games available for the Xbox One that will attract lots of Japanese gamers. They can pick up Titanfall, Dead Rising, Forza, Ryse, Sunset Overdrive, Minecraft, and Halo, but there’s no must-have game there. The Xbox 360 launch suffered because some key Japan-friendly titles missed the launch (Dead or Alive 4, Enchant Arm), but this time Microsoft has relied much more heavily on Western titles to sell the machine. Clearly it hasn’t worked.

Microsoft can turn this situation around, but it needs some big Xbox One exclusives that are highly appealing to a Japanese audience. But even then, it would take something like an Xbox exclusive Dragon Quest RPG to attract lots of players to the platform quickly.